Dubnyk needs to start stringing good games together

Oilers’ backup will get rare back-to-back start in Vancouver tonight

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Devan Dubnyk’s struggles to keep the puck out of Oilers’ net have varied erratically from game to game.

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This was supposed to be the year Devan Dubnyk made the final step forward to assume the starter’s role with the Edmonton Oilers. After inexorably working his professional way from ECHL to AHL backup to AHL starter to NHL backup, Dubnyk cemented his big league job last fall while Jeff Deslauriers was shown the door. DD proceeded to roundly outplay Oilers’ starter Nikolai Khabibulin, and had far superior stats across the board to prove it (12-13-8, 2.71, .916 compared to 10-32-4, 3.40, .890).

The job was Dubnyk’s to lose entering the current season, as he was awarded the start in the season opener, delivering a 2-1 shootout win over Pittsburgh Penguins. Soon thereafter, however, DD found himself wearing a ballcap most nights, as Khabibulin sprang out of the gate with an extended run of brilliant netminding that powered the Oilers to an 8-2-2 start. Dubnyk got the odd start here and there, then became a more frequent flyer in the rotation as the Russian veteran’s play inevitably began to fall off. Still, Dubnyk has failed to earn a significant run of games at any point, never starting more than two in a row. His percentage stats have fallen off by roughly 10% to 2.93 and .908, while his points percentage has dropped from .485 to .389.

Dubnyk’s play in 2011-12 can best be described as erratic, with a few excellent performances like last night’s 47-save performance against the high-powered Sharks to flat out steal a shootout victory for the Oil. His problem has been his inability to string solid games together. Whether consecutive games for the team or a week apart or whatever, Dubnyk seems to inevitably follow up a strong performance with a poor one.

Check out Dubnyk’s save percentage on a start-by-start basis so far this season. (Note: For clarity I have omitted the four games in which he came in to mop up lost causes.)

It goes without saying that goalie performance has a direct relationship to results, which are graphically demonstrated by blue circles representing wins, red diamonds = losses. Dubnyk has posted a Sv% of at least .923 in all seven of his wins. Overall DD’s Sv% is .955 in wins, .884 in losses. He is 7-2-0 in games where he has posted .915 or better (currently about the league average), and 0-9-0 in those games where he has fallen below that threshold. In eight of those nine he’s been below .900, and when that happens it seems the Oilers have no chance. This isn’t a team that wins 6-5 thrillers, and that’s for sure.

Only twice all year, though, has Dubnyk managed to put together back-to-back starts with a save percentage of .900 or better. Not coincidentally he hasn’t won two starts in a row yet this year either. He just doesn’t seem to be gaining traction at all.

Interesting to compare Dubnyk’s sawtooth performance chart with that of Khabibulin:

Khabi’s hot start is clearly reflected here in a series of strong games marked by blue circles or at worst gold squares (overtime/shootout losses which at least earned his team one point for their night’s work). After crashing out with a brutal .571 performance against Ottawa — literally off-the-charts bad; imagine a red diamond about this far down the page — the ‘Bulin Wall bounced back with another pretty good stretch featuring some high-performance wins, before dropping off badly in recent weeks. He’s 0-7-1 in his last 8 starts, and can only be considered a tough-luck loser once, in that 1-0 loss in St. Louis last week. Otherwise he’s been below .900 in five of those eight, and below .800 in three of them. I don’t want to say rude things about 39-year old goalies, but let’s just say if I was an astronomer reading a light curve that looked like that chart, I would be using the term “decay rate” to describe the star’s diminishing output.

Khabibulin has posted a Sv% of .917 or better in all eleven of his wins and all four of his overtime ties; in other words the Oilers have received better-than-average netminding every single time they’ve taken a point in the standings all season. (So much for Young Gunzz!) Khabi’s combined Sv% is .958 in wins, .950 in “ties”, just .883 in losses. He’s 11-3-4 in starts where he posted .915 or better Sv%, 0-12-0 in the rest, which includes nine games below .900, five of those below .800. Khabibulin seems to have more awful nights than Dubnyk does, moreover Renney is much more apt to pull him before he can turn his night around.

Not saying those losses are all on the goalies, mind, just that when they don’t have enough thumbs to plug the dike the team has no chance. The Oil have won just two games all year (both by Dubnyk) where the goalies have allowed as many as three goals.

From Dubnyk’s perspective it’s also worthwhile to compare his performance from his breakthrough 2010-11 campaign, when he established an Oiler club record .916 Sv%.

Last year I had a similar observation about Dubnyk often struggling in the second game when given consecutive starts, but when splitting time he was more likely to follow up a good game with another one. Devan was able to string together three games over .920 on three different occasions, sequences that included three of his four two-game winning streaks. Overall he was 11-3-5 in games where he exceeded the league average Sv% of .915, and 2-10-3 in those games he fell short of that mark.

If Dubnyk wants to emerge as a true number one goalie at the NHL level, he needs to start bringing his A game on a more consistent basis to first of all earn more starts, then make the most of them. Sounds as if he might get his next chance to put two good games together as early as tonight, when he is projected as the starter in Vancouver against the Northwest Division leaders. Not just back-to-back starts, but on back-to-back nights for the first time in his career. One thing is for certain, as Devan demonstrated as recently as last night: without excellent goaltending the Oilers stand little chance. Does DD deliver?

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